Anke Huels

Neighborhood disorder and ovarian cancer survival in Black women

Abstract Ovarian cancer (OC) is the fifth leading cause of cancer mortality among women in the US. Black women experience significantly lower OC survival than White women. Evidence suggests that this disparity is not solely the result of barriers to healthcare access but may also be impacted by other factors, including neighborhood social characteristics. To investigate this further, this study developed an approach for remotely estimating the degree of physical disorder (PD) in neighborhoods using structured audits of Google Street View imagery for participants in the AACES, a multi-site population-based study of Black women newly diagnosed with OC. We then assessed whether neighborhood disadvantage (ND) and PD were associated with overall survival. We fit Weibull accelerated failure time models to assess the association of both PD and ND with survival among 471 Black women with OC (n = 317 deaths). Both PD (event time ratio (ETR), 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98, 1.00) and Area Deprivation Index (ETR: 0.96, 95% CI: 0.94, 1.00) were associated with shorter survival. The results suggest that both physical and social neighborhood characteristics may impact survival in woman with OC, but further research is warranted.